Zoukfest '99 Octave Mandolin

[Dave Bucher]

Heres a very interesting Octave Mandolin I made as a donation to Zoukfest '99, a festival created by those of us on the Cittern List. I was experimenting with multi staved basks then and used rather unusual flamed red oak from my furniture making business with a cool piece of osage orange for the fingerboard. I did not know much about osage orange then as even though I am a wood wizard from the Pacific Northwest this fabled wood comes from the midwest. Now I LIVE in the midwest5 and I LOVE this wood. It is a famous self lubricating super high density (about 1.4 specific gravity) that has traditionally been used for wagon axles. I, as a general contractor have "rescued" many flitches of this wood, called "hedge apple" from the weird fruit that was destined otherwise for the fire place or land fill. I've used it for tool making, jigs, and especially tailpieces. I'm sure it'd make a really good tuning peg. As I'm starting to make a few baroque guitars and a chitarra battente soon I'll experiment.

The block inlay on the fingerboard are Les Paul styled green ab and the top is a really hard and sharp piece of sitka with Spanish cedar and maple laminated neck. Zoukfest '99 is inlaid in script on the truss rod cover plate and red ab heart (the mollusk of choice where I'm from. Chicken of the Sea its called and with good reason!!) GW logo on an ebony overlay.

Dave
The Golden Wood Stringed Instruments

[Steve-o]

Dave,
Wow, you've got some mad skills there. The originality and artistry of your work is reminiscent of Stephen Owsley Smith. I imagine you ran in the same circles in those early days. Did you and he talk shop much then?

[Dave Bucher]

Dave,
Wow, you've got some mad skills there. The originality and artistry of your work is reminiscent of Stephen Owsley Smith. I imagine you ran in the same circles in those early days. Did you and he talk shop much then?

Yes Steve O. Smith is my sometime friend. When I first started making these "things" SOS instruments were indeed an inspiration and I thought that he was an innovator in a field that seemed to need a bit of innovation. This instrument is what I call a small and simple zook. Most of what I have made since are much larger and have features that address the "problems" of the "onion on a stick" as I see most CBOMs being. Steve and I hung out quite a bit back then and I know he admired my stuff as he's said so. I last saw him at the fourth Healdsberg Guitar Festival, the last one I attended. Anyway I will be setting up a new site (my third and hopefully the best working one) and pictures of some of what I'm making NOW will be seen here and there. I have a TC OM here at the house (my wife's) and while a nice instrument it it the very model of what I thought needed to be improved upon. Most of what I've made have much bigger and louder bodies, wider arched fingerboards, fully adjustable bridges and tailpieces easy to restring and having less of those harmonic overtones then the butt tailpieces that bug zooks have. Some have complained that my big instruments are TOO big and booming, and they're used to flat and narrow fingerboards and necks like a broomstick.

Thanks for the compliments and insightful observations.

Dave
The Golden Wood.

PS my wife says of my first few instruments that they're like "shallots on a stick"!

[pjlama]

Steve-o I think you meant mad skillz. Adding a Z to the end of any word makes it extreme and fresh.

Dave sweet OM, nice work.

[Chinn]

Absolutely beautiful! Love all the different woods together.

I grew up using Osage Orange, we call it bois d'arc (bodock), for building duck calls. My family has turned calls from bois d'arc for over 80 years. We get ours near the family farm in Arkansas and it is always brilliant yellow with one exception - The rail line that runs through my family home town had a fenceline along it. The fence posts were cut from bois d'arc and most have been there longer than most can remember. The bottom 1 foot of the posts has wood which is irridescent green. Absolutely beautiful wood that darkens with age, but will remain brilliant green if kept out of the sun.

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

I remembered this one fondly when it was offered up for raffle that year. Really wish I had won that..

[Dave Bucher]

Absolutely beautiful! Love all the different woods together.

I grew up using Osage Orange, we call it bois d'arc (bodock), for building duck calls. My family has turned calls from bois d'arc for over 80 years. We get ours near the family farm in Arkansas and it is always brilliant yellow with one exception - The rail line that runs through my family home town had a fenceline along it. The fence posts were cut from bois d'arc and most have been there longer than most can remember. The bottom 1 foot of the posts has wood which is irridescent green. Absolutely beautiful wood that darkens with age, but will remain brilliant green if kept out of the sun.

Yes I said fabled and I meant it! There is a hardwood dealer near here in Independence MO that carries this great stuff and I've read a lot about its use as fence posts that gradually become the core of "hedges", thus its name hedge apple. This means that the "posts" are in fact living trees. I've read in Mother Earth News just recently about this. A baseball bat turned from it would weight perhaps 25-30 lbs. Its great wood for tailpieces for fiddles and end pins and bridge pins. I've used it for that but I've yet to make lute pegs from it but I am planning to use it for a vielle (hurdy gurdy) I have under construction. I believe that vielle bearings might work. I've used silicon bronze set in epoxy centering resin in an ebony pillow block but Osage orange would be a great all-natural bearing.

Thank you about the instrument itself. I think its bound in rosewood or paudauk or another reddish wood with bwb purflings and the pickguard and soundhole is bound with the same stuff.

Dave
The Golden Wood Stringed Instruments

[Dave Bucher]

I remembered this one fondly when it was offered up for raffle that year. Really wish I had won that..

Yes Clement, I should have given it to you in payment for all of your help. Some guy won it though and I hope he's enjoying it still. He sent me a photo of himself playing it. He looks happy!

Dave

[drinkybanjo]

Wow, just came across this. I am 'some guy' who won this. I've been enjoying for many years, lot's of live music on this OM. Sorry that Dave passed away, this is a great instrument.

[mjfidel]

This mandolin is up for sale
Golden Wood Octave Mandolin 1999 Natural https://reverb.com/item/34576651-gol...n-1999-natural

[urobouros]

The stave back looks amazing! So many mandos...so little money/space/spousal MAS enabling